Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday May 08, 2012 @12:59PM
from the you-wouldn't-download-an-angry-green-dude dept.

TheGift73 sends this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"Despite the widespread availability of pirated releases, The Avengers just scored a record-breaking $200 million opening weekend at the box office. While some are baffled to see that piracy failed to crush the movie's profits, it's really not that surprising. Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage. ... Of all the people who downloaded a pirate copy of the film about 20% came from the U.S. This means that roughly 100,000 Americans have downloaded a copy online through BitTorrent. Now, IF all these people bought a movie ticket instead then box office revenue would be just 0.5% higher. Not much of an impact, and even less when you consider that these 'pirates' do not all count as a lost sale."

The direct damage to ticket sales is NOT the reason the industry hates piracy. This is a very common misconception.

Piracy undermines the concept of ownership of data. If data cannot be owned, then it is not an asset.

One important key to being wealthy is asset diversification. It isn't just about having money, but also having gold bars, land, vehicles, businesses, and intellectual property. You own all of these things because their value can remain high even when the value of the dollar shrinks.

So, "owning" a movie is vastly more important than maximizing rent profits. Piracy tickles rent profits, but completely destroys the ability to own the asset, and hence reduces the wealth of everyone who has a large ownership stake in IP.

Of course....the fact that data cannot be owned because the laws of physics just don't support the concept is a non-issue. That is exactly what the force of law is for: to make poor people obediently buy in to the systems of ownership that keep them poor.

Movies like the Avengers will tend to do well vs. Piracy, because these high effect movies, look really good with all the sound, and large screens... If you pirate it, you get a shaky little display with perhaps stereo sound.
Now movies with a plot, may be more of a target to piracy. As we are more interested in the story and not the experience. But Hollywood doesn't put too many of those movies out any more, and will reserve these shows to DVD or TV production. Just because they can make money off of those that way.
The big screen, is getting more limited to those High End Fancy Effect films. They often will take some medium effect films and play them for a week, just to give them official movie credits, but their goal is to make money off the DVD/BlueRays.

People who say that never go into why copyright infringement isn't theft. Understand, in the following, that IANAL, and it will show, but I think it's important anyway.

Copyright and sales licenses are agreements between people--none of them me, you'll note--that so-and-so gets to profit from sales of a particular work. So-and-so, being so caught up in the idea that this license is exclusive, creates artificial scarcity and does other kinds of social engineering to drive up prices. They use the legal system--which was created to stop or punish abuses of power--to make sure the license remains exclusive, even though what's happening isn't sales of the work; it's free distribution, in ways that violate the exclusivity clause of the license.

Basically, piracy is "But you said only WE can do that! Make them stop! Mom! He won't stop! Make him stop! I want to be a millionaire! Make him stooooooop!"

Something was taken. The income that would have otherwise been realized from a legitimate purchase.

That income could be zero, if the pirate would not have made a legitimate purchase in the absence of piracy. This is the #1 mistake made when discussing this -- assuming that if someone pirates a copy, that they would have purchased that copy if they couldn't pirate.

That relation simply doesn't hold, though. This is most obvious if you consider the teenager with $50,000 worth of music and movies on their hard drive. If piracy was impossible, do you think they would have spent $50,000 on music and movies?

It's still stealing, and using a less stark name for it doesn't make it any less theft in absolute terms any more than the difference between lifting a pack of gum is less "theft" than boosting a Porsche.

In both those cases, there was a real, non-hypothetical loss. You don't have to guess whether a car thief would have bought a Porsche if car theft was impossible (probably not) -- the dealer is still out one Porsche. Whereas with piracy the loss is hypothetical and you do need to guess what the pirate would have done to even claim there was a loss.

That's why copyright infringement is not theft. It is not the legal definition of "that kind of theft". It's the legal definition of something which is illegal, but isn't theft.

Things that aren't theft can still be wrong. Maybe this is the third mistake that leads to the previous two mistakes -- If it's not theft it's not wrong, and copyright infringement is wrong therefore it must be theft!

If its not availbale for sale in my region, its not theft. If they wont sell it to me, they cant claim lost sale.Want Game of Thrones outside the USA?? hahahahahahahahaha, only one way to get it.With ebooks I have I look for legal sources first, 70% of the time I am still faced with "not available in your region"I can buy the frikken paper book from Amazon and ship it around the world, but not a lousy 300Kb of data?

Agreed. Anime is the same thing. If it is not available at all in your region, I feel no qualms about pirating it. If they do not feel like distributing it to sell to me in my area, I will feel much less guilty finding a copy online. This is particularly true for Anime, where in many cases you have fan groups making subs for movies, to allow a wider audience to enjoy them. From the distributors it probably doesn't make sense, as there is not enough market anyway, however that won't stop them complaining like heck about it.

eBooks are a joke. Same with regional iTunes. Heck, I don't know why anyone in Canada would buy a Kindle Fire when all the features are disabled unless you live in the US. I also keep hearing about the US VS Canada versions of NetFlix... I have heard of people paying a online service simply so they can spoof their IP address to a US one, so they can get the US NetFlix, apparently it puts the Canadian one to shame insofar as selection goes...

That's why copyright infringement is not theft. It is not the legal definition of "that kind of theft". It's the legal definition of something which is illegal, but isn't theft.

It absolutely is theft. You're stealing access that you don't have. Doesn't matter how you dress it up, and what legalese you use -- it's theft.

Definition of theft: the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another.

The music I'm downloading illegally is the property of no one. Someone may have a copyright on it, but that doesn't make it their property. Therefore it cannot be theft.Moreover, I'm not "carrying it away", I'm duplicating it. Therefore, for the second time, it is not theft.

Learn your word first, then look if it applies to the situation. Copyright infringement is not theft by any sense of the word theft. You might want to call it "theft" but that doesn't make it so. Not in English at least. in dhavleakish maybe?

But they are stealing the power over others that copyright holders have.

And we all know the slippery slope: one day a copyright holder will be treated the same as your average working Joe! They might actually have to live similar lifestyles and work as hard as someone who lives paycheck to paycheck.

So we really need to prevent copyright holders from loosing their power over others, otherwise they might have to put as much into society as they take out....

Um, every single part where you affect my material possession in any way? From wear-and-tear to outright damage (seriously?), to simply preventing me from having access to it if I decide to take my date home early or I forgot something in my car that's now not there.

The whole point is that if you pirate something the original copy is not affected in any way whatsoever. There isn't a single change, there isn't a single nanosecond where it's not still available to them.

If you could do something comparable to piracy to my car, like use a Star Trek replicator to instantly and harmlessly scan it, then reproduce a new one in the parking spot next it and then you drove off in that.. Then I wouldn't care.

Of course I also don't care if you did the same thing to my movies, but I'm not the copyright holder so my stake is only in my particular copy. Your argument doesn't even relate to the actual issue copyright holders have with piracy! What was even the point of this argument?

Especially in this case. $10 is not a tremendous amount of money. I downloaded a cam a few months ago to see the quality and it was hysterical. Anybody that downloads a cam and watches it the whole way through is the same kind of person who would dumpster dive and consider it no different than gourmet food.

The case against theft is that it denies the use of said item from the owner. Copying a movie does not prevent the owner from selling the movie; it doesn't prevent the use of the movie by others who paid their admission. The only thing it supposedly does is prevents the rights holders from selling a performance to those who choose to copy it, which this story is saying (and numerous other studies on the matter say) is plainly not evident. People who pirate will either still go to the movie in the theaters,

Something was taken. The income that would have otherwise been realized from a legitimate purchase.

So if I bake my own bread using the same recipe as the bakery in my neighborhood, I'm stealing from the bakery? Sorry, no. Something can be stolen only if it's material and you had it in the first place. Things you might get in fantasy parallel universe don't count.

I'm going to use the anime market in the US as an example here.
After the original japanese release, most anime franchises are not distributed in the US until there is already a large fan base.

How do you have fans for a show that isn't even available? Piracy.
How many of these pirates would have bought the dvd if there were no pirated copies being handed out? ZERO, because they would never have known the product exists.

How many millions of dollars do you think companies like adv, cartoon network, etc made because of the pirate anime market?

At the same time, around 100,000 people have watched a crappy download of the avengers instead of paying to see it in the theater.
Have you ever watched a theater rip? It's painful.

People don't watch camera rips because they would rather save the cost of admission. They watch them because
a) they CAN"T afford the cost of admission,
b) they want to see it before opening night,
c) they downloaded it because they were bored and wanted something to distract them for an hour.

Group A is not a lost sale.(they have no money)
Group B is not a lost sale. (they also saw the movie in the theater)
Group C is not a lost sale. (they would have just turned on the TV instead)

Now, dvd quality rips are another story. There are people who just download the movie instead of buying it.
However, there are also a lot of other groups of people who are labeled "pirates"..

a) People already own the movie but don't feel like ripping and transcoding it by hand ( like my blue ray collection )
b) People who have the dvd but just got a new 1080p mega-tv and think the higher quality is neat.
c) People who live in places where you can't buy the movie.
d) People who contribute screenshots to sites like imdb and tvtropes
e) People who don't have access to TV, but have family with internet and a cheap hard drive. (rural areas, mountain regions)
f) People who work odd hours and can't afford a dvr+digital cable for delayed viewing.

All of these groups are downloads that would not have equated to a sale.

a) already bought it
b) don't think the extra 300 pixels is worth an extra $20
c) don't have an option to buy
d) can't afford to spend $20 on every movie they edit
e) can't buy a show that isn't on disk. (samurai pizza cats)
f) Can't afford the hardware, can't afford to change schedule, can't buy the disks until it's out.

I'm group d) : I download cam rips so I can put the audio track onto an MP3 player. In the country where I live there's a legal requirement to DUB foreign films, so I can't see it in English. I go to the cinema and stick the MP3 player in 1 ear. No lost sale.
The audio quality's not great though:( I once suggested a system for cinemas where people could use headphones similar to a silent disco, where you could select a language on the side and listen to a different audio track. It never went anywhere thou

Remember, the damages the MPAA and RIAA claim in civil suits are statutory damages. That means congress gave them a special number to reflect how big the damages supposedly are, how hard it is to catch violators, and so on. If the real world numbers are a whole lot smaller than the hypothetical claims, those special numbers are based on a vast series of lies. It's easy to call the uploaders and torrenters thieves, but lieing to congress is a crime, and surely most of the people who think stealing is immoral

No, you're discussing the wrong thing. Every day we hear about how our basic freedoms are being taken away to stop the pirates from ruining the movie industry. We hear that we have to suffer through some awful DRM scheme because otherwise the media producer will go out of business under the staggering weight of piracy.

No matter how many votes we place to kick out SOPA supporters or what purchasing behavior we engage in, the informed and engaged don't number enough to make a difference unless we speak loud and often to convince the apathetic masses. The point we're making is not only correct, it is the only one worth mentioning.

It's a legit point. Claiming that "piracy isn't the problem the MPAA shrieks it is" is not the same thing as claiming that "piracy isn't theft".

You can't determine the appropriate response to a problem without correctly grasping how much of a problem it is. We as a country made a decision that the problem of highway accidents wasn't severe enough to justify a 55MPH speed limit, and raised it to 70MPH, for example. As a more appropriate example, we also decided that the threat of piracy by VCR was not severe enough to ban the production and sale of VCRs - as the MPAA tried to propose [wikipedia.org].

So, to reiterate: people can think piracy is theft while also thinking the MPAA is vastly exaggerating the severity of the problem.

I just want to be able to burn a copy of my legally bought DVD, and pay my legally bought games, without dealing with DRM or other bull shit... I hate the fact I have to dig out my old CD's to play an older game and I *Hate* when my internet goes out and I can't play a steam game because it can't connect to their DRM servers...

That said... it's copyright infringement and it is illegal.. I think their numbers are bogus and 100% political/greed driven.. but the simple solution is to simply vote with your doll

The copyright holders already have copyright. Regardless of the moral arguments, copying a piece of media that you don't have the copyright for is illegal. As you pointed out, that is well and good and we already have laws set up to punish those who break it for better or worse.

What I don't agree with however, is eroding our rights to give copyright holders a bigger stick to beat people with. Especially when there is such a long history of big business using various laws that were written for other purposes to reduce competition and other shenanigans.

MPAA gets to choose their business model. They don't get to ban entire Internet protocols, arbitrarily shut down websites without due process, kick end-users off the Internet, or any other non-business-model-related "rights" they've been lobbying for.

It is arguable that the degree of harm presented by 'piracy' is immaterial in judging its illegality, or even its wrongness; but it is overwhelmingly harder to argue that it is immaterial to the question of what measures should be adopted to stop it...

When the media owners are(more or less continually in one guise or another) continually demanding greater legal protection and enforcement, which carries both direct monetary costs to the public, as well as potential damage to the interests of people and other industries, the amount of harm that they are suffering is very much an important detail.

Even if we are agreed that 'piracy' is theft, the question "Theft of how much?" matters. The law enforcement expenditures, and the curtailment of the interests of other parties, one could justify for the theft of $1 are totally different than the theft of $1,000,000.

If we do not so agree, the question acquires an even greater importance. If, for instance, we construct the phrase "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." to suggest that Congress should only extend copyright if, and where, doing so promotes the progress of science and the useful arts, this immediately raises the question of where, and where not, additional copyright protection leads to additional production.

At a bare minimum, even if copyrights are viewed as fully equivalent to real property, and infringement fully equivalent to theft, there is an important question of fact about how big the theft is. One simply must answer it in order to categorize, and respond to, the calls for detection and prosecution of such theft.

If one takes a less expansive view of the scope of copyright, it is entirely possible that the degree of economic harm to the owner of the work becomes directly relevant to the question of what protections you will give it. Protections are, after all, carved out of the scope of what others are allowed to do. They inevitably represent compromises. The gravity of each party's concession is important to deciding where the correct compromise lies.

Let me start with saying that I don't pirate - but I disagree with your conclusions anyway.

Same thing applies to Slashdot. Threads of this exact nature pop up every 2 months or so for the last 10 years -- and the point they're trying to make is still incorrect.

The media owners have every right to choose their business model.

As long as they don't have a monopoly and don't collude to restrict consumer choice or set prices, that is.

Oh, they *do* have monopolies, granted by the government, and *do* collude? Then they've violated their end of the bargain.

The customer has every right to purchase, or not to purchase.

You don't want to spend 10 bucks on Avengers in a regular theater -- the MPAA cannot make you spend those 10 bucks. They can't make you spend 16 bucks to watch it in 3D either. They can't force you to buy the DVD or BluRay. They can't force you to rent it. You have every right to disagree with their terms, and not give them your business. But you don't have the right to obtain their media on terms they did not agree to.

You guys are simply discussing the wrong thing. The profitability of Avengers is 100% immaterial. The producer could choose to sell at 10x the price, or 1/100th (and take a loss). Their media, their choice. You choose to buy or not to buy (which is how you regulate their choice).

Let me rephrase: "You choose to participate or not participate in culture (which is how you regulate their choice.)"

This is a cost that's not reasonable for most people to take; it cuts off their references and ability to communicate.

As part of culture, the media is partially owned collectively by the culture, and partially owned by the people that produced it. This was recognized in the original constitutional basis for US copyright:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

(Emphasis mine).

Piracy is theft no matter how you dress it up.

DRM is theft no matter how you dress it up; theft from the commons.

Piracy is copyright infringement. It is a violation of rights granted by law, like battery is a violation of rights granted by law. But it isn't theft.

Also, I believe most piracy involve no loss to the original rightsholder - most piracy is performed by mass pirates, who would not have the financial capacity to buy more than a very small fraction of whatever they pirate in the first place, and most things they pirate they never get around to looking at, and would not have bought if it had any noticeable cost at all.

Actually, no they don't. Copyright was invented as a mechanism to provide some incentive to the creators in order to get them to create. They in fact cannot do what they like because there is no innate ownership: they cannot for instance block fair use.

Also, they (in may countries) cannot sell DVDs that don't work as advertised, etc, etc.

Just because they made it doesn't give them any right to do what ever they want.

another riaa shill trying to equate "Piracy" with Copyright Violation.

You sir are correct that piracy is theft as it usually involves the taking of physical goods by force yet RIAA/MPAA want to encourage everyone that a copyright violation is as bad if not worse then piracy, where people are injured/killed while the theft is taking place but No One gets killed during a copyright violation, otherwise the Chinese Population would be dropping faster then it's increasing and the government there would be dead a

Your post was insightful until the last line, "Piracy is theft no matter how you dress it up." Piracy is no more theft than theft is murder. Here's the difference between stealing a movie and pirating a movie.

If you walk into WalMart and steal the DVD, that's theft. WalMart no longer has their DVD, they took a loss, whether or not the thief ever intended to watch the movie. If he's caught, he'll pay a couple hundred bucks in fines.

If you pirate a movie, nobody has lost anything, and it may even prompt the pirate to see the director's or leading actor's next movie on the big screen. And if he's caught, he'll pay hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"Piracy is theft" is propaganda for the stupid. They share less in common than theft and rape.

Your points would be correct IF we had a free market, but we don't, we have government controlled monopolies. See copyrights being so long your great grandchildren will be dead before this movie leaves copyright (if it ever does) and the cartel pricing of movie theaters (ever wonder why nobody tries to undercut the ticket prices to draw more crowds? its because they CAN'T because they will be banned by the cartels from getting any prints) and your arguments simply don't hold water.

What we are talking about is frankly one of the most simple tenants of economics, if you price an item too high and use artificial scarcity to control those prices then a black market WILL arise to service those customers you ignore. Instead of following the Henry Ford model of classical capitalism, IE sell it cheap and crank them out, instead you have a bunch of MBAs (Masters of Being Assholes) that figure out what the absolute limit is and try to charge at that price or even above. You wanna know why piracy exists MAFIAA? Look in the mirror, you don't offer the customers what they want at a price they can afford.

If you were smart you'd do like Valve has with Steam, where they sell it cheap and crank it out but that wouldn't allow you to screw over the consumers like you screw the artists with Hollywood Accounting (which if EVER there existed a reason for an antitrust investigation that would be it) while making record profits. In the end the only ones you hurt are yourselves, no amount of propaganda is gonna make the public turn on piracy simply because your prices are too high. Many former game pirates that I know switched to Steam simply because it allows them to get games quickly at an easily affordable price point.

But as long as the means of distribution and copyrights are controlled by the cartels friend then your argument simply does not hold because there is no real chance for competition to spring up and lower the prices. This is the main point of a cartel after all, to control access so only those that are part of the cartels have any real chance of success.

Most people I see on Slashdot, whether they think piracy is great, terrible or anywhere in between don't think the damage it does warrants special laws or draconian civil penalties. Reading anecdotes like this makes economic arguments for additional copyright legislation harder to swallow.

Saying piracy is theft confuses it with a completely different thing. Only good to call it that if you are looking to confuse people.

You (I guess?) live in a country where your copyright on what you create outlasts anyone

The summary is asking the wrong question. It's not whether piracy prevents blockbusters. It's how much does piracy reduce the box office receipts of new releases. Maybe avengers would have made $5 million more without piracy, or $20 million more, or 25 cents more. I have no idea. But let's at least ask the right questions. I'd appreciate anybody's thoughts on how much the piracy cost.

Or how much piracy helped Hollywood gain? Of those 100,000 or so Americans that downloaded it, I'd be willing to bet a fair number of them did go see it in theaters simply because they liked the crappy version they downloaded and wanted the full cinematic experience.

Agree'dOur local theater has started serving bagged popcorn that they heat up under a lamp. It's still $15 for a large popcorn and a flat soda. Instead of butter they now have a "butter flavoring" dispenser that shoots out some cold, yellow tinted oil substance all over your popcorn. Then they have about 5 different shakers filled with different flavors of salt. None of which really contain salt... I'm not sure what exactly it is... but it's definitely not salt. But hey, they have Imax!

What it does have is mind piercing volume. We are talking 120db, nearly weaponized volume you can hear outside the building.

We asked that they turn it down last night and they did. We stopped doing business with the theatre which will not lower the volume.

And that was a for a light romantic comedy. Not even an action film. For some ungodly reason it was set to 7th row rock concert volume.

---

You can't duplicate the huge screen.

You can't duplicate the crowd effects of mass laughter, mass "ooing", mass "screaming"-- i.e. the crowd interacting with the film as a group.

I can see a comedy at home and its... okay. I see the same thing with 20 other people (much less 300 other people) in a theatre and it's hysterical.

For action films, the huge screen has an impact that my 55" at home lacks.

If you put cam quality dark, with theatre noises and occasional random shakes up against a real DVD 3 months later and the theatre during 1st run, it's no contest.

Cam is a novelty and helpful to poor students.

My problem with DVD's (and entertainment in general) is that there is more than I can watch. I'm overwhelmed. So I usually go with the cheapest. But for Avengers, I did go see it in 3d. The 3d sucked and the glasses were uncomfortable after 2 hours.

I can vouch for that, I downloaded Tron Legacy (cam video). The quality was terrible but it got me interested to go see the movie at cinema. Problem is that these Trailers always make these movies look good, but suck when you go watch them. If it's a good movie, I'll go watch it on the big screen, or buy the Blueray, but I'd like to see what I'm paying for first.

"Watch the first 10 minutes of this movie for free" and then you have the option to buy the ticket "for your nearest cinema" (or purchase the movie online if it has already been released in that medium).

Although it seems unlikely because it offers almost no incentives in the business side of things (unless it was a paid subscription system).

What makes you so sure that it actually causes a loss? You don't think that maybe some of the downloaders flicked through it, watched a bit of it or perhaps even the whole thing and thought to themselves "Hey that was pretty damn good, I want to go see it in the cinema and get the full experience!"?Maybe if it wasn't for piracy, Avengers would have made $5million less.Or maybe, just maybe, it would not have made a difference at all.

Can't speak for anyone else, but I go out to the movies several times a month... I'll often download a pirate copy if I have to go to the restroom during the middle of the film, so I can catch what I missed. I will also download copies of movies I have bought, as it's often easier and faster than transcoding them myself. I'm not always a lost sale, and a lot of times I am an added sale because of "piracy". I also tend to buy useful software, I may pirate 2-3 versions after my initial purchased version though, before purchasing again. In the end, I'm just a frugal bastard who wants a bit more convenience, and value for my money.

Ok, let's crowd source this, if you're reading this, are in the US, and downloaded a pirated advance copy, please respond: did you also buy a ticket for opening weekend? Did you choose to buy a ticket BECAUSSE of the download? Wild you have been likely to buy a ticket, but did not due to the download? This would be a good slashdot poll.

Well, according to the article, and the summary too, actually, about 0.5%, maximum. But the article goes on to say this is in the U.S.

But does this mean that piracy is not an issue for the movie industry at all? Well not so fast.

A recent study showed that the US box office is not suffering from movie piracy, but that there is a detrimental effect on international box office figures. The researchers attribute this impact to the wide release gaps, which sometimes result in a high quality DVD copy being available on pirate sites while a movie is still showing in theaters.

I think he meant to say that the percentage is meaningless, it is the actual dollar amount that matters. 0.5% may sound small, but $1,000,000 is a lot of money. Not relatively large, but that is still $1,000,000 more that should go to those investing in the movie and movie theatres, not people trying to get something for nothing.

Then again, that 0.5% is completely made up. For all I know, the pirating could have helped them make more money from free advertising ("Hey, I saw this awesome movie on Bittorrent, you should go see it this weekend").

What that tells us is that, just as we saw in the music industry, the primary driving reason for piracy is not cost, but rather unavailability. Not everybody likes the "full cinematic experience"—sticky floors, overpriced food, little b**tards throwing popcorn at your head, etc. However, lots of folks still would like to see the movie at the same time as everyone else so that they can talk about it with their friends.

Thus, the very act of trying to prop up the theaters through protectionist tactics

Well, according to the article, and the summary too, actually, about 0.5%, maximum. But the article goes on to say this is in the U.S.

But does this mean that piracy is not an issue for the movie industry at all? Well not so fast.

A recent study showed that the US box office is not suffering from movie piracy, but that there is a detrimental effect on international box office figures. The researchers attribute this impact to the wide release gaps, which sometimes result in a high quality DVD copy being available on pirate sites while a movie is still showing in theaters.

Then fix the release gaps, and stop whining. The rest of the world is tired of being reduced to second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth class [wikipedia.org] US citizens...If you want our money, start treating us like equals, and release the damn movies at the same time everywhere.With digital releases, it shouldn't be that hard.

The summary is asking the wrong question. It's not whether piracy prevents blockbusters. It's how much does piracy reduce the box office receipts of new releases.

That's not even the right question because the answer is inconsequential. The real question is how do bootlegs affect BD/DVD/VOD sales/rentals. I go to the theater to get the full effect. I only go to the theater for movies I truly want to see. I knew 2 years ago I was going to go to the theater to see The Avengers. For all of the "I'd like to see it if..." titles I can wait and see them at home. That's where a bootleg would cut into sales and where I'd like to see the numbers. I'd say in the US it's still

Actually there is a halo effect with movies, a friend of mine did his PHD thesis in economics partially on this effect. When a big movie comes out the previous movies (if its a series) see a bump in DVD sales. Movies by the same director or with the same lead actors get a bump. In this case, certainly the previous "Avenger" movies in the "series" probably saw a bump in DVD sales and movies with Robert Downey Jr probably saw a bump.

The reason for this is likely pretty simple, people are talking about the Avengers and that stirs up interest in the previous movies, wanting to see them again or see them for the first time before the big movie or even a friend saying "Hey if you liked Robert Downey Jr in Iron man you should see Sherlock."

If there is a place where piracy is effecting the bottom line for studios it is probably seen in this effect where people might have been inspired to buy a copy of the Hulk to check it out but instead downloaded it to save a few bucks. It would be interesting to look at the spike in downloads for movies that your would expect to see a spike in DVD sales for.

Of course that doesn't mean every download of those movies is a lost sale, many of these movies are available for rental or VOD.

Dear Hollywood,
The reason The Avengers succeeded where other movies performed poorly is because it was a special and unique movie. Specifically, it was a good movie that lots of people wanted to see.
Sincerely,
Me.

You forgot to apply the Hollywood Multiplier. Each of those pirates would actually watch the movie at least 800 times apiece. In 3D. And buy tons of merchandise. If only the option to download it outside of the system wasn't available. So it's actually a 400% loss, not a *potential* 0.5% loss.

Yar. Though we be pirates brave and true, our great guns and carronades only reach about 1 mile inland - and that be with good harborage. Thar be no way we can conduct the required cannonades to plundar all movie theatres for thar treasure chests of delicious popcorn with non-dairy liquid.

People actually watch those camcordered versions? Really? I torrented one once. I thought it was a joke. Is there a market for pirated ebooks with blurry fonts or MP3s reduced to monaural sound at 16 Kbps, too?

You have three alternatives for seeing the Avengers in the near future:$15 - watch it in crowded theaters at high def, pay gobs more for concessions$0 - watch it at home at low def in your underwear with your own snacks$0 - don't watch it (or wait until it comes out on DVD and watch it as often as you want for the price of a single theater viewing)

The second and third option cost the same and there are a lot of people that still get as much or more enjoyment from the low def movie in their own home. I chose

I take it you never pirated audiobooks or ebooks pre-kindle. The Audible mp3s are getting better, but for a long time even pay audiobooks were super low quality. Before there were large name ebook vendors (and I am talking amazon and barnes here not the smaller older ones) most of the eBooks out there in pirateland were from spine ripped, ocr'd scan stacks. They weren't blurry, but they were full of ocr errors and formatting problems.

Every piece of literature, art, or human creative product is based on what came before. It's based on human nature, human history and human life; the species hasn't changed that much in the last 5000 years since the dawn of urban civilization.

So if you want really original stuff, read Gilgamesh and Homer, then you're done. Everything else is not original, not completely so; no artist operates in a vacuum.

Most of us choose instead to gain from retellings and new ways (or new mediums) of telling the archetypal stories of the human condition.

Is The Avengers a breakthrough? No, but it's a well-executed modern take on interesting and important stories that reveal somethings about ourselves, in a new medium that has its advantages and its failings. And it's FUN.

It so happens I *do* take part in international discussions about things like movies, and I often need to avoid discussions for movies I haven't seen yet. I suspect that foreign participants often have to do this for American made movies, so we can hardly complain when we have to wait.

In any case, it's no reason to watch a crappy handheld camera version in mono sound. I'm not talking what's legal here, but what makes a reasonable viewing experience.

The thing about Piracy is, the people who pirate are not people who would have paid for it in the first place.

That's what they don't get. It's not stealing, because there are no lost sales.

People pirate because it is convenient, or because they want to see it and don't think it is worth paying for, or can't pay for it (students/unemployed as well as other regions). That is why Piracy makes no dent, because people are happy to pay for things worth paying for. All of the super hero movies. Good comedies. Shit like Contraband or MIB3 is simply going to do marginally well because it is tripe. Popcorn entertainment that is only worth paying for if there is nothing better to see and you still want to go to the movies.

I pirate a lot, because I can't afford to go to the theaters for most movies. Conversely most movies are not worth paying for and if I could not download them, I would be absolutely fine with that. The avengers is worth seeing in a cinema, which is why I will make sure I see it in one.

If studios, artists and programmers get rid of this idiotic concept that piracy is stealing and they are losing money, and just start making stuff worth paying for at a price people are willing to pay, then they will reap a profit. It's that simple, folks.

The thing about Piracy is, the people who pirate are not people who would have paid for it in the first place.

I've already read 2 other posts of people that did pirate the cam version and then went to go see the movie. Piracy has a lot of use cases. The only one that costs the content producers money is when a person was going to pay for the content, but pirated instead and decides that is all they need. What % of pirated copies falls into this use case is a big unknown. I have a feeling it isn't very high and a lot of pirates wouldn't have been paying customers like you said, but I don't believe that 100% of p

The thing about Piracy is, the people who pirate are not people who would have paid for it in the first place.

That's not true. People who downloaded High Definition movies to watch on their big screen TV do it to save them the cost of buying it. Someone might see a BluRay movie they want, but don't want to spend the cash getting it, or rather try downloading it first. If a person can't get the movie for free, but really wants it, they'll pay for it.
I bet some people who want to see this movie will wait till it's out on BluRay and download it, vs going to see at the cinema.

if it's really not very good, why waste your time downloading it and then watching it?

Quite simply because there is nothing better to do. The same way I might channel surf and settle on something I don't really care about, I might browse torrents and download and watch something I don't really care about.

But there are plenty of people who would have paid for it but will pirate it because it's convenient

These are by and far the minority. If it were the majority, movies would simply not do as well as they do, nor record sales. Itunes wouldn't even be able to make a profit.

but the fact you are downloading it and taking up time (both to retrieve it and to watch it) and money (allocated space on your hard drive, bandwidth that you purchased from your ISP, electricity) means it has value to you

Oh come on. Time is negligible. Hard drive space costs nothing, especially if you don't keep the file. Electricity would

Huge numbers of people pirated the movie before it was released. The movie broke the record for opening weekend sales. Therefore, using the same figuring style that the MPAA uses ( only in reverse ), piracy actually made the movie industry millions!

Piracy shouldn't affect new-releases at all. People go to the cinema for the whole experience which is really something that can't be pirated, can it? Unless you install full projection equipment and a three story screen in your own home.

We saw this 10 year ago with "The Eminem Show". That album was everywhere online before it went on sale. It was like a virus--it was hard to be online during the Spring of 2002 and NOT download a copy.

Then it was released, debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, sold over 1 million copies the first week, and was the best selling album of 2002.

I guess a story like this is good as another example to drive the point home. But really, not news.

..because of cancer was the reason we got the torrented copy. She was able to watch while we were at the theater, so it was almost like she went with us. She in NO way would count as a lost ticket sale, and I expect this wasn't a unique occurance.

I didn't bother to read the article obviously, but to compare opening weekend results directly with CAM downloads ignores many aspects. The most obvious to me is the people who did NOT go out to the theatre and who WILL NOT download the CAM, but who WILL wait two months for a high-quality free Blu-Ray rip to appear online. These are potentially lost sales for the theatres.

(Having said that, after going back to a theatre for the first time in a couple years specifically to see Avengers, I still believe the root of their problem does not lie with piracy, it lies with the appalling rudeness found in your average public gathering. For the same price, two months later, my living room is infinitely more comfortable and better equipped to show ME the movie in a manner I will enjoy and not be distracted by phones, screaming children, and poor sound).

If all of those pirates paid to see the movie instead, that would increase sales by 0.5%... However:

Some pirates may have downloaded it for multiple people to watch.Some may have downloaded it but also paid to see the movie, perhaps using the pirate copy to decide if the movie is worth watching or not, then going to see a full quality copy.Some of those who downloaded it might never have watched it at all had a download not been available.Some who watched the downloaded copy may have told others it was worth watching, who then went and paid to see it.

What the box office record does say however, is that piracy is not responsible for low sales... If a movie bombs, the poor sales are more likely to do with the movie being garbage (and there have been a LOT of crap movies released lately) than down to piracy.

Piracy is a scapegoat, used as an excuse for crap movies and as justification for implementing even more draconian restrictions on paying customers.

Ofcourse its a self fulfilling prophecy, if you release crap movies and enforce draconian restrictions on legitimate customers, then people will flock to the pirate copies which lack those restrictions (and a shit movie might be worth watching for free if your bored, while not being worth the time and expense to see it legitimately).

Finally, while not all pirated views represent a lost full-price admission ticket sale, they most certainly do represent a non-zero form of lost revenue.

Unless I see the cam on Wednesday before the Friday opening, tell all my friends how awesome it was and all five of us see it in the cinema on Friday at midnight. In that scenario the cam/made/ 5 sales. This is pretty much what happened with me and/Cabin in the Woods/. A friend saw it, told me it was good, so my girlfriend and I saw it then we told all our friends they should see it. Look at that, because one guy saw the film and told his friend about ten people have paid full-price admission for it now!